


Wind and Winter

by PoppyAlexander



Series: Dawn Before the Rest of the World [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: All The Stories In This Series Have Crying, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Angst, Caretaker Sherlock, Crying, Don't worry tho, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Unhappy Endings At Stonefield Hall, Romance, Sick John, Sickfic, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1910727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock must demonstrate his devotion while caring for a seriously ill John.</p><p>AU-Stonefield Hall, 1920s Stately Home. Butler!Sherlock/Gardener!John</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wind and Winter

 

_“And when wind and winter harden_  
 _All the loveless land,_  
 _It will whisper of the garden,_  
 _You will understand.” --Oscar Wilde_

 

Sherlock rolled from his back to his side and yawned deeply. Recovering from a fever and a chest-cough since before Christmas, Sherlock hadn’t slept an entire night through in nearly three weeks. Only in the past few days had he begun feeling more like his usual self, coughing less, wanting his pipe after dinner in a way he hadn’t when he’d been feeling poorly. Eyes half-open, Sherlock searched for John’s silhouette beside him in bed, but his little room was pitch dark with no lamp and no moonlight. He shifted the bedcovers higher around his chin; his ear and nose were cold. The little stove had gone out, too; it must be the earliest hours of morning, perhaps two or three o’clock. Sherlock’s long hand reached out beneath the blankets to where he knew John would be; the sleeve of John’s nightshirt felt strangely damp. Sherlock reached farther, lay his hand on John’s chest. His nightshirt was soaked through. John let out a quiet moan, rolled his head to the side, and Sherlock could smell that his breath was foul.

Heart thumping hard in his chest, Sherlock slid his hand higher, to John’s neck, the far side of his jaw. His skin was positively fervid, dripping sweat.

“John?” Sherlock whispered loudly. “John!” He sat up, feeling in the dark for matches on the bedside table. He lit the lamp, turned it up. John’s hair was plastered to his forehead and to his cheeks just in front of his ears. Sherlock laid a hand across his forehead despite what was already terrifyingly obvious: John was burning with fever. Sherlock yanked the blankets off him, and John moaned quietly but did not really awaken. He rolled his perspiration-soaked head slowly to the other side and then was still. Out of bed now, Sherlock braved bare feet on the cold floor to move quickly around the bed, lit the lamp on that side so he could get a better look at John.

There were beads of sweat on his upper lip and rolling down his temples into and behind his ears. His face was flushed, but the skin around his mouth was pale, almost stark white, with a bluish tinge around his lips.

“Oh, no,” Sherlock groaned. “John! Can you wake up?” He reached for John’s bare feet and shook one. John let out a deep, uncomfortable sigh, and then began to shiver, his body wracked with forceful shudders from his thrumming legs to his jittering hands to his quivering chin and chattering teeth. Sherlock rolled the bedclothes back up, tucked them around and beneath John’s body. He pressed his lips to John’s eyelid and they came away damp, salty, burning. “Oh no no. . .” Sherlock begged in a whisper he wasn’t even aware was emerging aloud. “Oh, no. . .”

He jammed his feet into slippers, threw his dressing gown over his shoulders and grabbed the lamp. Out of his room, down the steps, down the hall to the kitchen. He started ringing bells, summoning the footmen. He still didn’t know what time it was, but it was nowhere near dawn.

He rang Miss Hooper’s room, and only then did he switch on the electric lights in the kitchen, blinking against their glare as they warmed from dim to bright over the course of several long seconds. He listened and heard no one stirring anywhere in the house, and so rang the bells again, first of the footmen, then Molly, over and over, urgently. Unable to bear standing still, alone in the kitchen, waiting for some response, Sherlock strode back down the hall to Molly’s room and pounded it with the side of his fist.

“Miss Hooper! I need your help!” He paused, listened. “Miss Hooper! Watson is very ill; I need you!” He ignored the way his voice cracked a bit around the words. He banged again on the door and it opened, Molly appearing in slippered feet, hair in a long rope of a braid over one shoulder, tying her dressing gown at the waist. Her face was pinched, pale, her eyes red from sleep.

“What can I do? Is he feverish?” She started past Sherlock into the hallway, bustling toward Sherlock’s rom. “We’ll send for Dr MacDonald, do you think?” Sherlock trailed behind her with the lamp, and suddenly she lurched sideways, caught herself against the wall. Sherlock rushed to hold her elbow.

“You’re not well,” he said seriously, looking more closely at her now. Her face bore a flush across the nose and cheeks, pale white around the mouth—the same pattern as on John’s face. “May I?” Sherlock  motioned and Molly nodded. He lay his hand across her cheek and found her not as warm as John, but still much warmer than she ought to be. “Back to bed,” Sherlock ordered, and guided her gently but insistently by her elbow back to her own room. He did not go in, but watched her walk across to her bed and get in it, to see she did not faint along the way. “I’ll leave this open; call if you need--” he began, then cleared his throat. “Anything.”

“Thank you, Mr Holmes,” Molly replied weakly. “I’m sorry.”

Sherlock nodded tightly, closed her door most of the way, stamped back to the kitchen. Two sleepy-looking footmen stood there, Thomas and Reed. When Holmes entered the room they straightened up most of the way, took their hands away from their bleary faces.

“Miss Hooper and Mr Watson are ill,” he told them. “Does either of you feel unwell?” The question came out like a threat; if the whole house was going down with fever, Sherlock knew not all of them would survive it.

Thomas and Reed exchanged glances. “I feel just fine, Mr Holmes,” Thomas volunteered. “Only tired; it’s half-three in the morning.”

“I’m well aware of the hour,” Sherlock snapped, though he had not been. “You?” he demanded of Reed.

“Feeling perfectly well, sir,” Reed replied.

“Go and get Jones, or whoever of the stablemen is fit and able, and tell him he must go directly to Briarcliff, to fetch back Dr MacDonald.” Sherlock caught himself up short. “Who can drive the auto?”

Reed offered, “Jones can. And Harper. I can, as well.”

“Fine, good. Anyone will do. They must go at once and tell the doctor Stonefield’s got scarlet fever; Watson and Miss Hooper at least.”

It seemed Sherlock had finished speaking; his gaze cut away from the boys back toward the hallway, and at the end of it, his bedroom.

“And Mr Watson?” Thomas asked, though his tone did not carry in it any concern for John’s well-being. “How is he?” Thomas gave a knowing, slightly sneering look to Sherlock, to indicate he knew that John was in Sherlock’s bed, and had been all of this night and many previous, since the family had left for town.

“I can’t—“ Sherlock started, adjusted his posture upward. “He cannot fully awaken and he is burning with fever. Now, run and get someone; there isn’t time to lose.” The boys did not move from where they stood, though their expressions and stances seemed to indicate they were contemplating whether to return to their rooms to dress. Sherlock barked, “Now!” and they hurried off to fetch boots and trousers before going outdoors to find someone capable of piloting one of the automobiles as far as Briarcliff.

Sherlock found kitchen towels, ran the cold taps to soak them. Young Margaret appeared from around the corner. “Is something the matter, sir?” she asked. “All the racket woke me.”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered with his usual efficient, no-nonsense tone returning to him. “Margaret. I wonder if you would chip some ice from the ice box. As much as you can, and quickly. Fill a bowl or a bucket.”

“Yes, Mr Holmes,” she answered automatically, and went to work locating the ice pick and mallet and the cook’s largest wooden mixing bowls. “May I ask why?” she added meekly as she knelt down to start chipping at the block of ice beneath the ice box and hefting fist-sized chunks into the first of the bowls.

“Mr Watson and Miss Hooper are ill with fever, Mr Watson especially. I must put him in the bath tub and cool him down as much as possible until the doctor arrives.”

A momentary panic flashed across Margaret’s face, but then she turned steely and chipped harder and quicker at the ice.

*

An hour later and John was in the tub, in his nightshirt, packed in ice from the kitchen and snow from the garden. Sherlock had supported most of his weight, Margaret doing her best on John’s other side, as they brought him down the hall and settled him into the tub. His arms and feet hung over the edges in a strange sprawl, balancing him so he wouldn’t slip down too far. John’s teeth chattered; his face and neck flushed so dark red they were nearly purple. Margaret brought cool damp flannels from the kitchen for Sherlock to wrap around John’s head and keep his brain from boiling. Now and then John groaned something that sounded like words, but none of it made sense. Sherlock kept his mouth shut, only moved clockwise around the tub, touching John’s hand or his bare, shaking foot, or his neck, or his cheek. Sherlock couldn’t take his eyes away, looking for signs that John was improving, or worsening. Between deliveries of the cold flannels, Margaret went to Molly’s room and fed her sips of water, felt her forehead, brought her a shawl, lit her lamp.

“Can you—“ Sherlock said, wringing his hands in front of his now-closed and tied dressing gown. “Margaret.”

She looked at him with raised eyebrows. Frightened of the formidable Mr Holmes at the best of times, Margaret found seeing him so thoroughly rattled to be somehow even more disconcerting. He was still running things, giving orders, but his eyes were different. Wider. Now and then wet.

“I know it’s cold outside.” Sherlock’s fingers were wrapped around the handle of a bucket so tightly his knuckles were white.

“I’ll go and fetch more snow,” Margaret volunteered immediately. “I can see it’s melting a bit.” She took the bucket from him, screwed up courage enough to rest her hand over his for a moment. “Mr Watson seems a little better, to me,” she offered. She watched his mouth wobble and bend, but if he was trying to smile at her, he was incapable. She understood.

When she had gone, Sherlock moved closer to John, unwound a now-tepid damp towel from his head, stroked his fingers through John’s hair. He leaned down and kissed his temple, which was still torrid and sweating.

“That’s enough, now, Watson,” he said quietly. “You’ve made your point.”

*

It was nearly dawn by the time the doctor arrived. He shrugged off his coat and sized up the situation: John in the tub, soaked now with melted ice and snow pooled in the bottom of the tub, the last of the ice from under the icebox resting on his chest; his face still flushed, pale around the mouth; now and again moaning but never fully waking.

“You’ve done the right thing, trying to cool him,” Dr MacDonald intoned, mostly to Margaret, who stood nearby standing as tall as she could, looking serious. Sherlock hung back in a corner, worrying his lower lip with thumb and forefinger, his forehead deeply creased, saying nothing. “I’ll give him an injection; you’ll have to try to get more aspirin into him every few hours until the fever comes down.”

“He won’t even drink water, sir,” Margaret reported. “It’s like he doesn’t even know we’re here.”

The doctor listened a long time to John’s chest, then prepared a large syringe, worked John’s sleeve up his arm. “Do your best. You’re a good little nurse, I can tell.” He gave a grim smile in her direction, went to his work. Margaret glanced toward Sherlock, offering an expression that told him she knew very well it was not her that was nursing him.

“Hopefully, this will bring on some improvement in the next few hours,” the doctor said. “He’s very ill; I won’t say otherwise. But the injection should lower the fever. If he still isn’t responding by midmorning. . .” The doctor was snapping his big brown bag shut. “Well. Hm. You’ll fetch me back.”

“That’s not what you were going to say,” Sherlock challenged. “What were you really going to say?” He took a step forward, and Margaret clasped her hands in front of her heart.

The doctor squared his shoulders to Sherlock, stroked his moustache. “I was going to say, sir, that if he is still unresponsive by then. . .you should call a priest.”

Sherlock inhaled hard but said nothing, and his expression was fixed, stoic. He extended his hand. “I thank you for coming,” he said tightly. Margaret made a little gulping noise that could have been a sob, and covered her mouth. The doctor nodded at Sherlock and made to go. “Young Margaret here will take you to Miss Hooper.”

Once the doctor and Margaret had gone, Sherlock resumed his seat behind John’s head, on the small wooden stool Margaret had brought him from the kitchen.  He dipped the corner of a kitchen towel in a bowl of melting snow, stroked it gently across and around John’s eyelids, behind his ears. From this close angle, he could make out all the many shades of John’s hair: here straw-gold, here the brown of tree bark, every tenth hair silvery-white. He lifted a small lock of John’s hair between his first and second fingers, stared hard at the tips of the strands, memorizing the colours, the ratio. It seemed he did this for a very long time.

When Margaret returned with a stack of damp flannels she’d set in the ice box to cool, she found Mr Holmes with his head bowed down against Mr Watson’s shivering shoulder. She said not a word, only set the flannels inside the washbasin, and left them.

*

“Come now, you must drink every drop.”

“ _Nnnn_. . .”

“I know, it’s bitter, it’s awful, but please, you must. Margaret, a spoon, please; I’ll have to give it to him in smaller sips.”

“. . .later. . .”

“Now. John. Please. _Please._ ”

“ _Mmmm_. . . cold.”

“You’re too cold?”

“ _Nmph_.”

“Ah, yes, well, the tea’s gone cold because you won’t drink it quickly enough. Come on, now. That’s it. Just a bit more.”

“Wess. . .harry gone. . .”

“Shh. There. Good. That’s very well done. Go back to sleep now.”

*

Midday Sherlock called for Reed to help him move John out of the bathtub. John seemed more alert being shuffled down the corridor than he had in the middle of the night, seemed to know he was meant to walk, though Sherlock bore most of John’s weight with an arm thrown around his shoulder, and John’s head lolled. Reed helped Sherlock remove John’s soaked nightshirt and dress him a fresh one of Sherlock’s. Any comments about why John was in Sherlock’s bed instead of his own that may have come to Reed’s mind as they worked, he quite wisely kept to himself. Sherlock thanked him, reminded him that despite the illness running through the house (one other young maid, two stablemen, and a footman were down with fever, as well) there was work to be done, and dismissed him.

Sherlock dressed and arranged his hair but did not shave. He left his collar open, did not put on his necktie or his coat but dragged the little chair from his writing table around the bed to John’s side, sat there with his elbows on his knees, now and again fiddling with his watch chain that dangled from his waistcoat. Margaret brought broth for John and a plate of stew for Sherlock which he thanked her for and promptly forgot. He crushed aspirin pills into white dust with the bowl of his pipe and stirred it into cups of tea with more sugar than was advisable, and poured it by the spoonful into John’s mouth, watched his throat to see him swallow.

Margaret came again, with another plate of stew, and turned up the lamps; Sherlock had lost all track of time. She begged, “Mr Holmes, please eat a bit. I know you’re worried for them—for Mr Watson especially—but we must keep up our strength if we’re to be counted on.”

He looked—really looked—at her and for the first time since she’d crept into the kitchen in the wee hours of morning and knelt by the ice box with pick and mallet in hand; he looked hard at her face. Her expression of concern was genuine; it made her look older than her years.

“You’re a good girl, Margaret,” he said. “Thank you for all you are doing; it’s. . .”

“Nevermind, Mr Holmes.”

“I know it’s difficult.”

Margaret set the plate down beside the one from hours earlier, and looked at John—his forehead creased as if he was worrying, even in his sleep; his face flushed and perspiring.

“Will we pray for him, sir?” she murmured.

Sherlock only nodded. Margaret offered her hand and Sherlock took it. She lay her other hand on top of John’s and bowed her head. Quickly, almost as if it were all one word, Margaret breathed, “Almighty God you are everlasting health for those who believe, hear us for your servant John Watson, we beg your tender mercy that he may be restored and give thanks, through Christ our lord, Amen.”

It was a few long moments before she released Sherlock’s hand.

“Thank you, Margaret.”

“I’ll be back for your empty plate, Mr Holmes,” she scolded mildly, and removed his uneaten lunch as she bustled out of the room.

Sherlock alternated mouthfuls of the stew for himself with spoonfuls of the aspirin-laced tea for John. The house made settling sounds as evening unfurled.

*

Near midnight, Margaret found Mr Holmes still in the wooden chair, his long legs barely fitting in between it and the edge of his bed. His head and upper chest rested on Mr Watson’s chest, his hand on Mr Watson’s hand with their fingers entwined. At first she thought he was listening to Mr Watson’s lungs the way the doctor had. But as she approached to ask him if he needed anything more before she took herself to bed, Mr Holmes did not stir. He had fallen asleep there with his ear to Mr Watson’s heart. The tableau was slightly startling and there was a strange feeling in her stomach, for this was the way a mother would nurse a child through sickness, she thought, or a wife nurse a husband. But she had never known Mr Holmes to be so tender as he had been, or to look so uncertain, or to be so occupied with things other than the house, the staff, calling for quiet, smoking his smelly pipe. He was a very kind friend indeed to Mr Watson, and if there was something else to it, well. God would judge; she must not. She draped her shawl over Mr Holmes’s bent back and dimmed the lamp.

*

Just after first light, and John cried out in his sleep. Sherlock was beside him in the chair, crushing more pills, stirring them into a teacup full of water and a fair drizzle of honey he’d warmed by the heat of his little stove. He started at the sound of John’s voice; the spoon clanked hard against the inside of the cup and he was afraid it may have cracked.

“John, can you hear me?”

John only turned restlessly onto one side, then the other, then onto his back again, and Sherlock lay his hands on John’s shoulders and felt the radiant heat of his body through his damp nightshirt. John settled and his muscles went lax as softened butter under Sherlock’s hands.

John moaned a sad-sounding hum that sounded like “mumma,” and Sherlock had to close his eyes. He leaned closer to John’s face and could see that the skin of John’s lips was beginning to peel. Closer still, Sherlock’s mouth beside John’s ear: “ _Oh_ , my John. . .What will I _do_? What will I do if—“ Sherlock choked on a lump in his throat and drew back, pressed his knuckles to his mouth to keep it all in. When he lifted the teacup on its saucer, it rattled and he couldn’t stop it. He set it down again, lifted the spoon, steadied John’s chin, tipped just a spoonful at a time of the warm honeyed water (tinged bitter by the aspirin) between John’s cracked lips.

*

“Miss Hooper’s a bit better this morning, Mr Holmes. Anna is about the same, but no worse. Miller is up on his feet though I think he looks a bit paler than he ought to.”

“Well, then, you must keep a close watch on young Anna, and Miss Hooper, too.”

“Will you come to the kitchen for breakfast, sir?’

“I wonder if you’d bring me some tea on a tray, please. A bit of toast and jam might appeal.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And more of that broth for Watson. Not too hot.” Sherlock pursed his lips, then remembered to add, “Please.”

“Has Mr Watson. . .”

“Not yet.”

*

Sherlock pressed a cool, damp towel to John’s lips, which were so dry and cracked it pained Sherlock to look at them. He raked John’s sweat-dampened hair back from his forehead with long, cool fingers. Now and again John started to shiver, and his teeth chattered, and he groaned deep in his throat. He would seem to want to awaken, mumble strings of nonsense too quiet and garbled for Sherlock to make out, but then fall quiet again, sometimes snoring. Margaret brought in cold, wet towels she had laid outside in the snow for a bit, and Sherlock tucked them around the back of John’s neck, laid them across his forehead and his closed eyes, nestled them under his nightshirt across his chest.

Sherlock shifted his knees to slide his little wooden chair closer to John’s side, wrapped up one of John’s hands in both of his own and held it to his first to his chest, and then to his lips. If he’d been a man of faith he would have been praying without cease; as it was, reeling in his mind louder than any other of his thoughts (which were few), was a never-ending stream of urgent begging. _Please, please, please, please please please. . .please. . . **please**_ , and it seemed in itself a sort of prayer—the closest Sherlock Holmes would ever get to beseeching the help of a power beyond his own.

John’s fingers moved in his hand—not tightening, only restless, but it was something.

“John. Can you hear me? Listen, now. You must gather up all your strength—every bit—and fight off this damned fever or. . .”

“. . .bench. . .” John muttered, then, “. . .asters.” He was talking about improvements he’d made to the little plot where Sherlock’s forbears were buried, a few months previous.

Sherlock squeezed his hand. “You’ve finished all that, not to worry.”

“. . .lupines, too. . .”

“Yes, and the lupines. It’s beautiful. All done.” He laid John’s hand back on the bed, stroked one long palm up the back of John’s hand, along his forearm. “That work’s all been done. Now you can rest.”

John was quiet a few long moments. Sherlock dragged his fingertips from John’s knuckles, up his hand, along his arm to his elbow, then down again, and back up.

“Jane,” John moaned. His wife’s name.

“Shh.”

“So. . . So this.”

“Hush now, John,” Sherlock soothed, and bit his lip.

John’s forehead creased deeply and his lips turned down at the corners. “Sew this button. . .not again,” he mumbled.

“She won’t mind,” Sherlock said. “Shh.”

John’s face softened and his breathing quieted. Sherlock’s hand came to rest on John’s wrist.

*

When Margaret brought in a plate of roasted potatoes and the last of the previous day’s stew, Molly was with her, wrapped in a shawl, with shadows under her eyes and flushed cheeks.

“I thought I smelled something good,” Sherlock offered, taking the plate from Margaret’s hands and managing a slight smile. She looked pleased. Sherlock set the plate aside and bowed his head slightly toward Molly. “Miss Hooper. I’m glad to see you on your feet.”

Molly motioned for Margaret to leave them. She moved closer to Sherlock and laid a hand on his arm, near his wrist. “Have you slept?”

“A bit.” Sherlock brushed the idea away with a wrinkled brow and a shake of his head. “It’s fine.”

Molly searched his face; he looked somber, as ever, but the creases in his forehead were deeper than usual, and there were dark rings around his bloodshot eyes.

“It’s not fine, actually,” Molly told him. “You’re exhausting yourself. You really need to rest.” She glanced at John, who was sleeping quietly for the moment. “Margaret said he’s. . .has he woken up at all? Does he answer when you talk to him?”

She heard Sherlock exhale through his nose but he said nothing.

Now Molly rested both hands on Sherlock’s arm, slid them down until she had caught his long, knobby hand between her own palms. She lowered her voice. “You’re taking good care of him, I know.” Her eyes filled, though she blinked quickly to dispel the gathering tears. “It’s been two days. If he isn’t any better in the morning—“

“Thank you, Miss Hooper, for your concern. I know Watson counts you a great friend.”

“Mr Holmes.”

“As I said. I’m glad to see you up and about.” Sherlock steered Molly toward the door. Her face was full of distress. “But I’m sure you should be back to your bed, now. Shall I call Margaret to walk you to your room?”

“Mr Holmes,” she tried again. “We must at least think about sending for the priest; just in case—“

He practically shoved her out the door.

“Good night, Miss Hooper. Thank you again for your concern.”

Sherlock shut the door behind Molly’s back and turned the lock. He laid a cool towel on John’s forehead, dragged his fingertips across John’s stubbly cheek.

“When you wake up in the morning, you’ll need the shave of your life,” he murmured. “They’ll think a tramp’s broken in.” He huffed a small laugh that ended in a sob, pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and fingers in an effort to gather himself. He busied himself untying and removing his shoes, slipping off his waistcoat and hanging it in the wardrobe. He lowered his suspenders, untucked his shirt, and climbed onto the bed beside John, pulling up only the top quilt to cover himself. Sherlock nestled his head onto John’s pillow, his forehead against John’s perspiring temple, his lips close to John’s ear.

“Please, John. You must wake up,” he pleaded in a whisper. “I waited so long for you; you can’t leave me alone again.” His hand went across John’s chest, came to rest in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. “Wake up, now. We’ve a cottage to build. And your farm.” Tears dripped over the bridge of Sherlock’s nose onto the pillow and he sniffed hard, struggled to steady his voice but found all he could manage was a choking, coarse whisper. “You promised me an armchair. And a bed of our own.” _Please please please please please_. “For pity’s sake, John, you’ve got to come back to me.”

*

“I’ve just looked in on them, Miss Hooper; they’re both asleep.”

“Mr Holmes needed the rest. And Mr Watson?”

“The same.”

“I’ll send Jones for the priest.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Ah, don’t cry, now, Margaret. We must be brave. Will we pray?. . .Almighty Father, you are everlasting health for those who believe. . .”

*

Sherlock woke to John thrashing a bit, muttering, “Will. Will. Will.”

“Shh,” Sherlock hushed, sitting up, shaking off his doze, blinking at the sunlight. “John. Can you open your eyes and look at me?”

“Aw, no. . .Will. . .” John sounded despondent, waved his hands uselessly in the air. Sherlock caught his wrists, tried to settle him. “It _can’t_. . .” John moaned. Sherlock held John’s hands down in front of his chest, and John was too weak to fight him off. He stroked John’s hair back from his forehead with the fingers of his other hand.

“Hush. . .hush now. . .John.”

John let out a long, agonized groan, and a tear escaped the corner of one eye. “. . .oh.  . . _noooo._ . .”

“Shh.” Sherlock pressed his cheek against John’s, kissed him beside his ear. “It’s all right. You’re all right. I’ve got you.”

“I’m hit,” John murmured sleepily. “Will. I’m hit.”

Sherlock leaned back, bit his knuckle.

“You’re safe. John. You’re safe.”

John moaned again, then was quiet. Sherlock tucked one hand behind his neck, and kissed his closed eyes. He tasted the salt of John’s tears.

“You’re safe, now,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

*

The priest’s arrival was the first time Sherlock left John’s bedside in two and a half days. He shouted thunderously, pounded his fist on the kitchen table, refused to let the man into his bedroom where John lay sweating and muttering nonsense. Molly hung on Sherlock’s arm, trying to calm him, to make him see that it was only a precaution, that John must be given a blessing, that it was really not for Sherlock to say. Sherlock refused, was steadfast, would not be persuaded, and in the end the priest was handed his hat and ushered out the door. Tearful Margaret withdrew behind the closed door of the W.C., and Molly frowned hard and threw up her hands. Sherlock poured hot tea into a chipped china cup and retrieved a stack of damp towels from inside the ice box, retreated back to his room.

*

The sun had shifted so that there was more shadow than light, and soon it would be fully dark. Sherlock had resumed his seat in the little wooden chair, moved it nearer the foot of the bed so he could uncover John’s feet and hold one in his hand, massaging with long, firm strokes of his thumbs.

“Mm.”

“I’m here, John,” Sherlock said automatically. “I’ve got you.”

“You. . .beauty. . .”

Sherlock stood so fast the chair scraped the floor. He leaned over John’s face, stroked his palms across John’s chest. “John?”

John’s eyes came open the slightest bit, blinked shut again. Sherlock pressed his lips to John’s forehead; he was still warm, but noticeably cooler than he had been. “ _Please. . .please. . .please_.” Sherlock didn’t know he’d said it aloud.

“Hurts,” John whispered then.

“What hurts?” Sherlock stroked his cheek.

“Everything.” John started to shiver again, and Sherlock tucked the blankets around him, rubbed his hands up and down John’s arms to warm him.

“I’ve got you,” he said. Then he turned his head and called toward the closed door. “Miss Hooper! Margaret!”

“Did I. . .” John ventured, voice very quiet, tongue sneaking out to attend to his dry, cracked lips. “. . .fall under the coal and ice lorry?”

Sherlock beamed, he couldn’t help it, and his eyes filled so John was momentarily a pink blur on the pale beige pillowslip. “No. You’ve had a fever.”

“My bones hurt.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Sherlock’s shoulders shook with sobs he could barely contain, though he battled to control himself.

John opened his eyes and this time they stayed open, just partway, and Sherlock moved his face to meet John’s hazy gaze.

“How long—“

“Nearly three days.”

“ _Mmph_.” John sounded surprised, perhaps even vaguely impressed with himself.

There was a knock at Sherlock’s door. “Mr Holmes? You called?”

“Yes, Margaret, come in.”

“It’s locked, sir.”

Sherlock pressed a hard, lingering kiss to John’s forehead.

“Never do this again,” he whispered against John’s still too-warm skin.

He went to open the door.

*

Late that evening, the house was quiet. John was sat slightly upright in bed and had been steadily sipping warm broth and tea, dozing for thirty or forty minutes at a stretch, but more and more lucid each time he awoke. The flush in his face was much less florid, and though he shivered now and then, it was not wracking his body the way it had; his chills no longer rattled his teeth.

Sherlock had at last been convinced to take a short bath and dress himself in a clean nightshirt and gown. He combed his hair back neatly from his forehead (without the pomade, though, it bent itself in a most unruly manner as it dried) and sat beside John on the bed, and ate his supper off a wooden tray Margaret brought. He looked at John’s sleeping face and felt a relief such as he had never known.

Molly came to bid them good night on her way to bed. She still looked weak and pale, her shawl tucked tight around her. She was whispering with Sherlock when John came awake again.

“There you are, John. It’s good to see you—“ Molly motioned with her hand. “ _Up_ a bit. You had us all so worried.”

John looked remorseful, like a naughty child. “Sorry ‘bout that,” he offered, and reached vaguely toward the tray across Sherlock’s lap. Sherlock immediately lifted the teacup from its saucer, tipped the cup to fill the saucer with tea, and lifted the saucer to John’s lips. Molly looked as if she’d seen a particularly vexing playing-card trick.

“Anyway, I’m to bed. Tomorrow’s a better day.”

“Good night, Miss Hooper,” Sherlock said, and his smile for her was warm and genuine. He refrained from commenting that if all members of the household staff were through convalescing, there was bound to be a backlog of work to catch up, come morning.

Once Molly had gone, Sherlock moved the supper tray to his writing table and moved to shuffle John’s pillows behind his back, smooth his hair that didn’t need smoothing. He settled back to sit on his side of the bed, slid his long legs under the covers and let his bare foot come to rest beside John’s, slowly stroked his small toe against the outer edge of John’s foot. He reached for his pipe for the first time in days, clamped it between his teeth. As he thumbed open the tobacco tin, John’s hand suddenly reached out and caught Sherlock’s, pulled it to his chest.

“You stayed here the whole time,” John said quietly, not like a question, though the question lay just behind the statement.

Sherlock lowered his pipe from his mouth, turned his face toward John, to meet his still-sleepy gaze. “I promised you I will never leave you. I intend to keep my promise.”

John’s mouth bowed up only as much as his chapped, dry lips would allow, but his eyes sparkled a smile of their own. Sherlock leaned down and kissed his temple; John closed his eyes.

 

-END-

**Author's Note:**

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**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Wind and Winter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5145626) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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